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A GUIDE TO THE STUDY OF THE SCREEN VERSION OF
STAGE DOOR
PART ONE: EDNA FERBER and GEORGE S. KAUFMAN
A motion picture, far more even than a play produced in the theater, is the result of many kinds of collaboration ; but when the play on which a picture is based is itself the result of collaboration, the sum total of collaboration is likely to turn out to be a hodgepodge— a case of too many cooks. With Stage Door we have not only a play written by two dramatists, but a screen play written by two others, not to mention the many writers, directors, and others whose suggestions were used before the film was at last ready for release. Only too often is it possible to detect the presence of too many fingers in the pie, but the film version of Stage Door stands solidly on its own feet.
Let us begin with a brief comment on the authors of the original play:
Edna Ferber, born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 1887, spent the earlier years of her life in the Middle West, and began her writing career shortly after serving an apprenticeship as a newspaper reporter. Though her first novel was published in 1911, it was not until some years later that she won national recognition as a writer of fiction. From the very first she has varied her literary output, turning out novels and short stories and (nearly always in collaboration) a few plays. So Big, Shoiv Boat, and Cimarron, full-length novels belonging to the 20's, are to date probably her most famous books.
Except for Cimarron, an Oklahoma story of pioneer days, Miss Ferber's fiction is concerned largely with the humbler and more "realistic" backgrounds of urban life in Mid-Western cities.
It is more difficult to judge her work in the plays of which she is only part author, inasmuch as we have very little evidence as to precisely how much and what each of the collaborators contributed to each work in question. The best-known plays of which she is part author are Minick, The Royal Family, Dinner at Eight, and Stage Door, all written with George S. Kaufman.
Mr. Kaufman (born in Pittsburgh in 1889), like Miss Ferber of Jewish parentage, likewise served his literary apprenticeship as